Q: You seem to use very "basic elements" in your movies: pictures and sounds that are clear and simple and then mix them up in a way that creates together something new.

John Smith: I try to be as economical as possible with the material that I use in my films. When I am planning a film I start with one shot and don't introduce another without a reason. A lot of my films are puzzles, viewing them (and many other experimental films) is a bit like learning a new language, so I try to keep the language simple and avoid using unnecessary images and sounds. I want the work to communicate clearly. Keeping the comparison with verbal language, I think of a film as a sentence, with the individual images and sounds representing individual words - the meaning depends on the choice of the words and their order in the sentence. I'm interested in exploring ambiguity, in discovering how many different meanings can be created from the same material. I agree with you that too much choice can be a problem - when I am planning a film I like to make rules for myself which restrict the amount of choice that I have. So I might decide to make everything happen in just one shot for example, or to shoot all the shots in the film from one camera position. But I also break the rules a lot, changing the language just when the viewer begins to understand it.

Q: Short films are very often jokes. What are your thoughts on that?

JS: I don't set out to make funny films, it just seems to happen. I think that a lot of the humor comes about naturally, it is a by-product of my interest in ambiguity. Playing with meaning makes people laugh. But the fact that people find the films funny is very important to me. Although aspects of my work can be difficult for a viewer who is only familiar with mainstream cinema, I'm not interested in making films just for an informed elite. I aim to make work that anyone can enjoy, and I think that the humor in the work helps to make its more esoteric aspects more accessible. The work operates on different levels, so hopefully most people can get something from it.

Q: Do you feel that your humor or stories are international or have you had some suprising reactions on audiences that you didn't expect to come?

JS: Because the verbal language in my films is often quite complex I am always surprised at how well people with different mother-tongues seem to understand them. But the more subtle aspects of their humor can sometimes be lost - I remember an audience in Japan finding my film The Black Tower extremely sinister, although a lot of the text is actually a rather comic pastiche of a horror story.

Q: Have you been with your films in Finland before and if you have , how did the Finnish people took them?

JS: I have only been to Finland once before, when I showed my film Blight at the Tampere Film Festival in 1998. Finnish people at the festival seemed to like the film, though my main memory of my visit now is of saunas and icy lakes, delicious food, vodka and tango dancing. I had a great time at the festival and am really looking forward to coming again.

Pirjo Savilahti, Uppsala

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